Reflection on the pandemic: questions about the authorities' response.

Theres a massive disparity across Europe in terms of climate, wealth, health service, density the list is endless. So no all of Europe is not their peers. Peers are those things that are similar.

So again, we can compare Sweden to Denmark and Iceland but not to Germany?

And again, why had Sweden less or comparable excess deaths over pandemic years to all those peers?

And since we are talking about Ireland; it was nice to see one of the Swedish peers (Denmark) have full stadiums for Euro 2020 matches while we cancelled all our own scheduled matches to protect the HSE. So even the Swedish peers which apparently 'did so well' had way less lockdown than the outlier that was Ireland. Denmark reopened their schools in April 2020 while we cancelled the leaving cert when there were less than 10 cases per day in the country.

I broadly agree with many of your points.

But if you look back at the 9e meal thing it was discussed in detail on the forum. Originally they only wanted to reopen restaurants, also done so that essential workers could have more food options.

People interact differently sat down for a meal versus out mingling in a pub for pints.

The vintners lobby objected and 'gastropubs' were included. The 9e meal had nothing to do with NPHET and was a political move based on transposing the substantial meal definition from existing legislation.

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/health-news/dr-ronan-glynn-says-nphet-22582616.amp

"When they started to do better"

That's an admission that what they tried didn't work. So they changed.

Ironically you want to use the period when they had restrictions to prove that not having restrictions worked better. That somehow makes sense to you.

I always believed the 5km limit was a knee-jerk solution to the unprecedented hordes of people descending on beauty spots over the first weekend.

Not helped by it being the first sunny spring weekend after months of consecutive storms, so we were all out soaking up the sun like junkies.

If the first weekend had been a washout, the 5km limit may well have been delayed until a later date. I did wonder whether someone just arbitrarily plucked that figure out of their imagination.

Never seen the parks as busy with parties and BBqs.

If you don't know what (or when) restrictions they brought in. Maybe you should research that before commenting.

Again what do you mean by peers? What do you mean by "course of the pandemic". Extending the timeline to dilute stats is fooling no one.

Ah look, Nphet tried their best but they made some howler mistakes, e.g.

-5km limit ?

-€9 meal ??

- leaving cert cancelled???

- schools & unis kept closed way too long!?!?

- nursing homes????

- not lifting the restrictions earlier in the first summer, despite cases easing quickly (it finally took Leo Varadkar to go against their recommendations to bring forward opening up to the end of June)

- testing???? Very poor e.g. why not use Antigen tests earlier!!

- senseless hygiene measures for an air borne virus

- shut down & takeover of private hospitals -> put back all elective waiting lists & was extremely costly for little effect

The issue is why did Nphet make these mistakes. Some of which were highly questionable at the time. Fwiw, I think Tony H was an unmitigated disaster. It was his way or the highway, and the power went to his head. E.g. immediately after he came back from leave , he caused trouble with government straight away I.e. he wanted to make a statement that he was back.

Secondly, the composition & oversight of Nphet was badly thought out. Public health officials are not the best people to run a country even in a pandemic. At least their findings should have been vetted by an oversight committee with a broader composition including business people, educators, student reps, etc, etc

Thirdly, their interpretation of 'the science' should have been more vigorously challenged at the time, and their recommendations vetted for even then obvious over reactions e.g. 5km limit, shutting down education , etc etc

So look Nphet did their best, and they did ok imho, only ok mind. It's just they were badly conceived & were fatally flawed from the off - and this showed in their recommendations & interaction with government & wider society imho.

But what you are basically saying there is no evidence behind the substantial meal. Which is my biggest issue with NEPHT. What difference does to make to the spread of Covid did the change in behaviour make? What's the evidence behind it? I'm using it as an example of the lunacy that went on at the time. I'm not interested in bringing up a long dead argument.

There is a logic but you like any hypothesis it needs to tested. I can understand early on being cautious because the data available was limited but as time went on and as more data about different measures became available NEPHTs approach didn't notably change. We still had antigen tests being described as snake oil long after they were being used by other countries.

With the level 5 lockdowns they went on far far too long. It was obvious that large numbers of people had stopped obeying them but they kept the lockdowns in place. The government was terrified after Christmas of getting in trouble if it went against NEPHT. Its not healthy for an unelected body to effectively(if not officially/legally) supercede an elected government.

Again while I'm broadly supportive of NEPHT they did make mistakes and to learn these mistakes need to be acknowledged. Otherwise when the next pandemic hits the body in charge will have a far harder time managing it.

Experimentation and learn from the results.

Quarantine is a well established practice.

No. It was claimed they had "none" and I simply said that's not true they had restrictions. I never said (or implied) "lots" that's your invention.

Some examples, international travel restrictions, limiting participation in public events, banning nursing home visits, and closing upper secondary schools. Some of which were enacted in 2020.

No I haven't basically said that. I posted a link demonstrating that NPHET had nothing to do with the exact regulation of the €9 meal and your respond with "that's your biggest issue with NPHET". Seriously?

Do you want to show us the evidence that driving at 51 kmh is dangerous and 49 kmh is not? And yet out laws have to pick some boundary marker to delineate speed limits.

Does that mean speed limits aren't based on evidence? Nope.

Do you really think it makes no difference to the spread of a respiratory disease whether people are sat down with a small group at the same socially distanced table OR mingling in a pub having drinks going from table to table? Do you want to see a diagram of interactions and the R factor of an infected person in each scenario? Or another explanation of how respiratory droplets disperse within 2 metres?

Do you think people are more or less likely to follow the guidelines in a hospitality venue if they're drinks with a meal or just drinking away?

So how would you go about transcribing this into a legal regulation?

Well?

And this is the crux of the argument, I said all along that NPHET should have been advocating for level 5 shutdown, full closure of all non essential retail, Movement restrictions etc. Because their only brief was to minimize the damage caused by covid-19, and to be laser focused on that.

The Government **** the bed by having absolutely no filter between themselves and NPHET. NPHET Should have comprised part of a larger taskforce consisting of them, Scientists, Mental health councillors, economists and others coming together and figuring out how to proceed. Instead the government only took advice from arsonists and seemed surprised the result was fire.